Out of the mouths of babes and British Colonels (hat-tip):

“We have exactly the same problem [as Israel] ourselves when, for example, we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course we have to use aerial weapons like artillery and white phosphorus, and we do use those weapons, even in areas that do have a certain amount of civilian population.”

Richard Kemp, speaking on Radio 4’s The World Tonight, is “an army veteran of 30 years who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003”, and “was a senior adviser to the Government on military issues”, according to the programme. The practice he’s describing – the use of indiscriminate conventional and chemical weapons in civilian areas – is, of course, a major war crime.